I'll post pictures later, but thought I'd at least post what John Hiram Wilkerson wrote for baby John Hiram Wilkerson:
John Hiram
Cold Decembers and fragile fallen snows cover the earth in silent white and its midnight stillness humbly purifies the chill of winter. In a month filled with glittery presents adorned by foil bows and satin ribbons meant somehow to attest to the divinity of mankind, a more perfect reminder of origin and belonging was received. As ancients millennia before declared to a struggling world, a tiny child, John, quietly professes the graciousness of God.
For now, there are almost-smiles and small fingers curled in trust around those of family who love him. Under dancing Christmas lights and carols of togetherness, we gather around him. It's an indescribable thing to hold something perfect; a tangible connection to an eternity that seems so distant from what we know. We imagine for him, with him. We wonder, asking silent, impossible questions and pleading with the universe for it to recognize what has happened within our hands; within our hearts.
Generations pass and renew themselves in cacophonous flashes of emotion. But, life is never as tenuous as it seems in its darkest places, because in flesh and blood, spirit and devotion we are eternally tethered one to another. He reminds us of our connections to a past that has faith in our imperfect creation of the future. Within a small, December child born at the celebration of an exalted brother, are the gentle echoes of thousands of voices, infinitely bound.
In his own silent stillness, maintained under eyelids closed tightly to the world that awaits him, he dreams. It's a world that is imperfect and wounded, hopeful and faltering, terrifying and infinitely rapturously beautiful. It's a world meant to show that he is loved, and thought upon, and hoped for. And because even the scariest parts of life are softened by the ephemeral tendrils of love and unquestioned acceptance, he will forever remind us that we are blessed with the graces of a father who loves and could offer no gift more perfect than this.
John Hiram
Cold Decembers and fragile fallen snows cover the earth in silent white and its midnight stillness humbly purifies the chill of winter. In a month filled with glittery presents adorned by foil bows and satin ribbons meant somehow to attest to the divinity of mankind, a more perfect reminder of origin and belonging was received. As ancients millennia before declared to a struggling world, a tiny child, John, quietly professes the graciousness of God.
For now, there are almost-smiles and small fingers curled in trust around those of family who love him. Under dancing Christmas lights and carols of togetherness, we gather around him. It's an indescribable thing to hold something perfect; a tangible connection to an eternity that seems so distant from what we know. We imagine for him, with him. We wonder, asking silent, impossible questions and pleading with the universe for it to recognize what has happened within our hands; within our hearts.
Generations pass and renew themselves in cacophonous flashes of emotion. But, life is never as tenuous as it seems in its darkest places, because in flesh and blood, spirit and devotion we are eternally tethered one to another. He reminds us of our connections to a past that has faith in our imperfect creation of the future. Within a small, December child born at the celebration of an exalted brother, are the gentle echoes of thousands of voices, infinitely bound.
In his own silent stillness, maintained under eyelids closed tightly to the world that awaits him, he dreams. It's a world that is imperfect and wounded, hopeful and faltering, terrifying and infinitely rapturously beautiful. It's a world meant to show that he is loved, and thought upon, and hoped for. And because even the scariest parts of life are softened by the ephemeral tendrils of love and unquestioned acceptance, he will forever remind us that we are blessed with the graces of a father who loves and could offer no gift more perfect than this.
